Jonathan Blow - On Game Design, Books, Movies, & many other things | gamedev Talks w Johanna Pirker 

00:48 How are you doing right now (during the COVID-19 pandemic)? 03:25 When is your operating system coming out? 04:48 What is your most exciting project now? 07:15 How has the pandemic affected your company, Thekla, in terms of working from home? 08:30 What tools does your company use for communication and workflow? 16:10 What is the current schedule with your two upcoming games? 17:20 Would you have done anything different to shorten the development time for The Witness? 20:27 How many employees are there currently at Thekla? 21:10 What is the work schedule like at Thekla? 27:57 What advice do you have for indie game developers? 39:25 What is your experience solving sudoku puzzles? 41:50 What are your morning rituals? 42:35 "If you're motivated, it's actually very easy to do a bunch of stuff first thing in the morning." 43:20 Where did you travel to recently during the pandemic? 44:05 What do you usually do in your free time? 46:10 How often do you go dancing? 47:22 "I think if you're like trying to logically solve puzzles all the time, it's very tiring." 47:55 Do you meditate? 51:38 What benefits do you receive from meditation? 52:25 "Benefits in everyday life are nice, but they're not what is that important to me." 52:36 "What's important to me is understanding the universe that we live in, and meditation is one thing that can help with that in a very serious way." 54:20 Do you have any book recommendations for learning meditation? 55:10 What are the pictures on the wall behind you? 56:23 Is art something that's important to you? 58:15 "Starting to build a receptivity to those (artistic) aesthetics can be a useful thing." 59:00 Where did you draw inspiration from? 1:01:10 What books are you reading at the moment? 1:01:32 (2012) _Hacker's_ _Delight_ by Henry S. Warren Jr 1:02:50 (2016) _A_ _New_ _Kind_ _of_ _Science_ by Stephen Wolfram 1:03:28 (2020) Wolfram Physics Project by Stephen Wolfram 1:03:40 (2010) _The_ _City_ _&_ _The_ _City_ by China Miéville 1:03:57 (1930) _Last_ _and_ _First_ _Men_ by Olaf Stapledon 1:04:01 (1932) _Last_ _Men_ _in_ _London_ by Olaf Stapledon 1:04:25 (2019) _Exhalation:_ _Stories_ by Ted Chiang 1:04:55 (1969) _Squaring_ _the_ _Circle_ by Gheorghe Sasarman 1:06:40 (1994) _Understanding_ _Comics:_ _The_ _Invisible_ _Art_ by Scott McCloud 1:10:00 (2008) _Logicomix:_ _An_ _Epic_ _Search_ _for_ _Truth_ by Apostolos Doxiadis et al 1:11:25 (1973) _Gravity's_ _Rainbow_ by Thomas Pynchon 1:11:56 (1972) _Invisible_ _Cities_ by Italo Calvino 1:13:05 (1965) _Cosmicomics_ by Italo Calvino 1:13:10 (1967) _t_ _zero_ by Italo Calvino 1:14:40 (1992) _Einstein's_ _Dreams_ by Alan Lightman 1:15:08 (1970) _A_ _Humument_ by Tom Phillips 1:17:10 (1984) _Dictionary_ _of_ _the_ _Khazars_ by Milorad Pavić 1:18:25 (1988) _Landscape_ _Painted_ _with_ _Tea_ by Milorad Pavić 1:19:20 (2000) _House_ _of_ _Leaves_ by Mark Z. Danielewski 1:22:05 Which books, if any, do you recommend as "must read"? 1:23:40 Which books from college, if any, were useful? 1:24:30 What movies have you watched recently? 1:25:05 (2019) Apollo 11 documentary 1:26:05 "I'm not such a big fan of what modern civilization has been doing, let's say, since 1975 or something." 1:27:45 "We're gonna have to rebuild the entire Internet if we want it to actually work." 1:31:26 Will you watch the next space launch? 1:34:23 Do you ever watch shows on Netflix? 1:36:25 (2004) "Deadwood" TV series 1:39:25 (2007) "Pitch Meetings" RU-vid show 1:40:40 What are your favorite movies from the past? 1:41:35 (1984) "The Adventures of Buckeroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension" film 1:42:15 (1981) "Excalibur" film 1:43:18 (2001) "Mulholland Drive" film 1:44:30 What advice would you give to your younger self? 1:47:45 What is your idea of perfect happiness? 1:48:55 What is your greatest fear? 1:51:55 Which living person would you like to meet the most? 1:52:25 "There are definitely people who are doing stuff that I respect, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to meet them in part because I know people are busy." 1:54:10 What is an usual habit or absurd thing that you really like? 1:54:32 "What qualifies as 'absurd'? Where are the boundaries?" 1:56:25 In the last five years or so, what new habit/belief has most changed your life? 1:57:00 [Jon discusses how programming in C++ long-term inspired his will to create his new programming language, Jai.] 2:00:40 What advice would you give to students? 2:01:33 "Being good at what you do actually really matters alot." 2:05:32 [Jon discusses imposter syndrome.] 2:08:22 [Jon discusses Sturgeon's Law.] 2:09:25 "It really matters who you choose to learn from." 2:11:01 "By volume, the Internet is mostly populated by material from people who don't have high standards over what they do with their time." 2:19:00 (1985) _Structure_ _and_ _Interpretation_ _of_ _Computer_ _Programs_ textbook by Abelson, Sussman & Sussman 2:20:02 "The way that universities work is that professors never outright contradict each other because that just makes a huge mess as soon as that starts to happen." 2:20:38 "Whoever says the most things that are opinionated gets heard the most by students." 2:23:36 "My memories of trying to program in Scheme are almost completely trying to debug programs where something dumb was wrong." 2:25:32 "I kinda feel that software hasn't got that much better since about 1996 when the Web got big." 2:27:45 "I am a big fan of smaller groups of people who have a vision of how things can be different ... doing something to show how it can different than what we can do today." 2:29:10 [Closing remarks and summary] 2:30:01 "Games is very rewarding in a certain way - that's why I'm there. It's also very difficult." 2:30:10 [Jon discusses game engines.] 2:32:20 "You can cover as much ground as I did alot faster than I did because you have a head start, but still it's not easy, and you should understand that going in (to game dev.)" 2:33:35 [Jon discusses streaming programming on Twitch.tv versus RU-vid.] 2:34:12 [Wrap up]

Thank you，this is great. the booklist is very useful👍

Here is a list of books and media that was mentioned: jpirker.com/video/jonathan-blow-interview/

Thank you for the interview. As a head of dev of a small game company (10+ devs) is always interesting to hear how other studios deal with project management and leadership, specially if J. Blow is the one talking!

Thanks two years later. I become a games developer at the age of 40 and had a very valuable time here listening.

As for why people no longer want to get good at what they do... I think it also has to do with the widening wealth gap and increasing resentment in the working class. People don't feel like they are regarded as contributing to society or to the reputation of the nation; they feel like they are regarded as the wage-slaves of billionaires. People aren't going to spend another 10-20 hours/week outside of work studying and improving when this effort will never be recognized or rewarded. Companies will just take and take and take from you, and string you along, and laugh at what a gullible idiot you are if you do free work for the company. Like Kevin Spacey in Horrible Bosses.

I feel like I was just sitting one table over on a first date.

Great interview. I find Jonathan is always worth paying attention too, even when I find myself challenged by some of his stuff. Thank you for sharing this.

"Not too soon" sounds like a totally OK amount of time to wait for an (S)OS from Jon! ;-) Really enjoyed the interview, thank you both!

Too much programming is definitely sharpen you skill, but from while to while you need to to have a long vacation just to avoid burnout.

This was really good. Thank you! You are a great interviewer!

Cool interview, thanks, Jonathan is a great developer, but I enjoy hearing him talk about other things much more, here is so interesting person.

Thank you for uploading it!

pirkers interviews are always fantastic. still remember the old blow and sawyer ones

Just for trivia, "Excalibur" only was made because they were not able to get the rights for "Lord of the Rings".

I wasn't familiar with "contact improvisational dance" at 01:55:00 and for those in the same boat as me, it looks like realtime Twister in the 4th dimension.

great follow up questions. great interview, love how much you let him talk (and he can go on for a while =))

wow, long waited release!

Great interview but I think you need to ask more follow up question and be more specific with them.

i like that jon looks at the camera sometimes. he's always speaking to his intended audience, not just to johanna.

Great interview, thank you for sharing!

Me: ok i am going to watch it for 5 minutes, then continue to the dev. 24 minutes later... what !? already past 24 minutes !? Very good to know the info and thinking that jb shared, Also i found Johanna very lovely :D ,it's not common thats an interviewer brings up the life part, which i think is really fun and important, thank you !

My all time favourite and respected game developer and creator Mr J Blow. Thank you for this interesting relaxed interview. Have you played ‘Braid’? I spent over a year listening to the music and watching Johnathan’s interviews before I did. Will remember the opening sequence of that game sitting with my children forever. Thank you 🙏

Thanks for the book recommendations!

it's funny when you hide your cat at 29:30. :) thx for the interview

What time is it now? JB: Explayining the universe

Hahaha she likes him

Can't believe I just stumbled across this now. Wasn't previously familiar with Johanna's work but her questions were awesome and Jonathan's answers (as expected) were extremely insightful. Thanks for making this!

Very cool, thank you!

Tarn Adams? :)

1:45:50 Would you really not be you? I mean, there are certainly events that do change you. But many don't. And many are just needless suffering.

Nice interview, good questions

Great interview. thanks

Do anyone know the name of this style of meditation that Blow mentions? I would like to learn more about it

wow amazing what he said at 2:34:00 about making mistakes, very few people have that mindset for sure and it shouldn't be !

Based John

Great interview, thank you for sharing.

HOW DID I MISS THIS UNTIL NOW ?? Thank u

omg pirker makes me perky

Nice. No mention of beer 🍺 choices while coding? He's prob the most honest about game dev thinking

2:06:08 That is not what impostor syndrome is. impostor syndrome is not about being an impostor without realizing, its about thinking you are an impostor when you actually aren't; Impostor syndrome is when you are good/successful, but you think that you are only good or successful because you are lucky or because others just haven't "caught on yet" or something. What jon describes is closer to some form of the DK effect, but where the person is somehow cognizant of that fact.

❤️

I remember watching the VOD, I was incredibly distracted by the low microphone/video quality so it took me 3 days to watch the whole thing. It was so interesting I had to!

One of the things I really admire about Jonathon Blow is that he understands the reality of not over planning every detail of game development because it completely bogs down the process of moving forward. He Clearly understands that Creativity is an Iterative process, and that making great product is not necessarily "always good for business" in the near future. It's about making a great game. On the other hand, I am still waiting on JAI, so, I would really appreciate some forward motion there.

so. awkward. :D

Moon landing? Disappointing. Braid, The Witness, such awesome games yet this dude probably believes we have satellites and ISS orbiting the earth.